A COUNCILLOR has launched an ambitious plan to kick off Glasgow’s own version of the world’s biggest music festival and conference.

Ken Andrew, councillor for Hillhead, tabled the motion for a Glaswegian version of South by Southwest (SXSW) at last week’s council meeting.

Although other council business meant it couldn’t be discussed, he’s hopeful of furthering the plans at the next meeting in September.

The SNP councillor said: “I like my music – every March, I get jealous when I hear people talking about getting to go to South by Southwest.

“I could never manage to make it there, so I thought, why not bring it to Glasgow?”

SXSW sees more than 100,000 people flood into Austin, Texas, for a variety of music, film and technology performances and conferences.

It brings in about $200million (£117million) to the local economy.

Last year’s SXSW saw performance from more than 2000 bands performing over nine days.

Scottish acts Twin Atlantic and We Were Promised Jetpacks are among those to have graced the festival’s bill. Andrew said: “Glasgow is definitely the place for it – it’s a rock and roll town. We’re a place that discovers bands, a city that no major bands would avoid.

“I was listening to an interview with David Bowie a few months back talking about playing in Glasgow and he said there was no feeling like stepping on stage here.

“It’s the sort of thing that people identify with across the country.”

Richy Muirhead, who founded the Scottish Alternative Music Awards, supports the idea.

He feels it could benefit the local music scene – as long as they emphasise Scottish music and Scottish business.

He said: “I feel anything that drives awareness to the creative industries in Scotland can only be a good thing.

“The SXSW model is great to discover new music and learn, and I’m supporting the idea of a similar model in Scotland - so long as it involves Scottish businesses and creative individuals.

“I also feel that it is important to be patient with any type of event or project you are building.

“As much as we would love it, things don’t actually happen over night.”

Andy Sheppard/Redferns via Getty Images

Craig Kneale at SXSW with bandmates Barry McKenna and Sam McTrusty

Craig Kneale , Twin Atlantic

THIS would be fantastic.

As someone who has been lucky enough to experience SXSW a few times, the opportunity it would give young bands to get in front of the people who could change their lives and the buzz it would bring to the city would be unparalleled.

Glasgow seems the perfect place. It has so many places that are or could be used as venues. It could be the colder weather brother to SXSW.

Kerr Okan

Kerr Okan, the LaFontaines

“It would be a great idea - it would be cheaper to attend, instead of going to Texas.

“Considering how vibrant and exciting the Glasgow music scene is at the moment, I don’t think there’s anywhere better than Britain at the moment.”

“I definitely would want to play. If it was something like SXSW we’d be one of the first to put our name forward for it.”

“These things are always notoriously filled with industry people, so if we can try and have that platform here and springboard from it, it’d be a brilliant platform for any local or national band in Britain. It’d be a great opportunity.”

Promo

RM Hubbert

2013 Scottish Album of the Year winner RM Hubbert

I’M not sure that a council is the best organisation to be organising a music and arts festival, to be honest.

A council-funded event would be a different story.

Glasgow has a long history of self-organisation within the arts and music scenes. This is what should be encouraged and celebrated.

However, if it ends up anything like SXSW, the local acts would be the last to benefit.

It would take a long time to establish itself to SXSW’s size though so maybe there’s hope in the short term.

Glasgow would be an ideal place to host it though – we have a lot of venues and other spaces that could be used in interesting ways. Growing to the size of SXSW would all depend on how it is organised, publicised and executed.

Graeme Ronald of Remember Remember

Remember Remember’s Graeme Ronald

EVEN without a festival such as this, I can walk around my home city any given weekend and know live bands from all strains of the musical spectrum are playing in our venues.

We have a rich local scene with DIY promoters committed to booking diverse and engaging international acts and programming events that fuse the best of both.

If the right people were involved, it could be wonderful.

Professor Of Entrepreneurship at Glasgow University Colin Mason

A LEADING city academic who headed up a course on entrepreneurship for musicians has backed the plans to launch a South by Southwest-style festival in the city.

Colin Mason, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Glasgow, said the event would bring multiple benefits to the city.

He said: “Bringing people to Glasgow is definitely good for certain segments of business in the city and I don’t think you can knock the city for trying that.

“Glasgow is one of many cities globally that are in competition with one another, and this idea of a festival could have a knock-on effect.

“People may visit for the festival itself and then decide that they like the city and what it has to offer and decide to base some sort of headquarters here in Glasgow.”

Having taught at the University of Strathclyde’s Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, where he spent part of his time working with musicians, Mason knows that one stumbling block for the plans could be bringing together music and business.

Mason said: “The notion of combining music and business is an interesting combination of terms.

“I taught a class to applied music students that ran for about 10 years, about how to combine their music skills with business ideas.

“We surveyed the graduates from across all 10 years of the course and we found that there’s a real tension between the ideas of music and business, with a lot finding that they felt a degree of compromise for one to the other, something that made it hard for musicians to buy into.”